[arch-general] Installing Archlinux alongside Ubuntu on a Windows 8 UEFI laptop

[Alan E. Davis]

After already chrooting, during the Arch installation process, I saw some
information that suggested to use a command, as follows:

mount -t efivarfs efivarfs     /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

It was ineffective, so after noticing a note that it should be done inside
and outside of the chroot environment, I tried it outside too.  No error
issued, however, nothing interesting happened.  That's when I backed out.

I can walk back through  it to that point.

This is so massively complicated.  It must have been the intention of the
originators of this system, to complicate the lives of the innocents.  It
makes me even more angry than I have been for the last 25 years.

To make it more complicated, there is no single such structure, but various
shades and variations.

Thank you.  I will try to get to that point again.

I am using May 1, 2014 installation iso.  Wow.

Alan


On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Alan E. Davis <lngndvs at gmail.com> wrote:

> I see another level of complexity here, in a statement on a page about
> Gummiboot on the wiki:
>
> * Warning: *Gummiboot simply provides a boot menu for EFISTUB kernels. In
> case you have issues booting EFISTUB kernels like in FS#33745<https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/33745>,
> you should use a boot loader which does not use EFISTUB, like GRUB<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB>,
> Syslinux <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Syslinux> or ELILO<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bootloaders#ELILO>
> .
>
> Would grub work, using this, or a similar, approach?
>
>
> On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Alan E. Davis <lngndvs at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ubuntu's kernel is on the / partition.  Would I move it to the ESP
>> partition, in that case?
>>
>> And I will mount that partition on /mnt/boot ?
>>
>> I have never used gummiboot.  Since the Arch system is already to go, but
>> not yet with a boot management setup, I should manually move that kernel to
>> the ESP partition as well?
>>
>> Alan Davis
>>
>>
>> On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 3:06 PM, Daniel Micay <danielmicay at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> On 01/05/14 06:02 PM, Alan E. Davis wrote:
>>> > This looks interesting, and I am tempted to walk into the deep water.
>>>  It
>>> > raises some questions.
>>> >
>>> > Will gummiboot or refind also find the Ubuntu partition?
>>>
>>> You should use the ESP (EFI system partition) to store all of the
>>> kernels. The loader (gummiboot) will find the Windows loader along with
>>> any kernels on that partition. You really aren't going to want separate
>>> boot partitions.
>>>
>>> > The original partition structure of the machine there were four or five
>>> > partitions, and another one popped up in the higher end of the disk.
>>> I
>>> > stumbled into the install, with the Ubuntu installer, and ended up with
>>> > four linux partitions in addition to the Windoze partitions.  At some
>>> point
>>> > I used gparted to resize, and this might have been the step that
>>> botched
>>> > the structure.  But in any event, I have three Linux partitions of 50G
>>> > each, and a swap partition.  Ubuntu is sitting in one of those
>>> partitions.
>>> >
>>> > I have no idea what is an EFI partition.  I have seen instructions,
>>> > presumably for those who are wiping the Windows and starting from
>>> scratch,
>>> > to make an EFI partition.
>>> >
>>> > I finally realized why there are so many partitions, and learned to use
>>> > gdisk when walking through the Archlinux install.
>>> >
>>> > Here is a some information from the gdisk listing:
>>> >
>>> >    Nbr   Size         Code   Name
>>> >   -----+------------+------+-------------------------
>>> >      1   1000.0 MiB   2700
>>> >      2   260.0 MiB    EF00     EFI system partition
>>> >      3   128.0 MiB    0C01    Microsoft reserved part
>>> >      4   49.6 GiB     0700      Basic data partition
>>> >      5   9.7 GiB      2700        Lenovo (?recovery?)
>>> >      6   10.0 GiB     8200       Linux SWAP
>>> >      7   49.4 GiB     8300       Archlinux /
>>> >      8   58.8 GiB     8300       /home
>>> >      9   1024.0 KiB   EF02     "bios_grub" (Ubuntu?)
>>> >     10   59.8 GiB     8300       UBUNTU /
>>>
>>> It's the one marked EFI system partition (ESP).
>>>
>>>
>>
>